Bruckner Chase successfully swims across Monterey Bay

MONTEREY -- The online satellite tracking of Bruckner Chase as he attempted to swim across the Monterey Bay on Tuesday stopped somewhere short of Moss Landing. Chase stopped near there too, but only to put on a wetsuit. Then the Santa Cruz native continued slogging through clumps of stinging jellyfish all the way to San Carlos Beach in Monterey, finishing the 25-mile journey and becoming just the second person to swim across the bay.

When he stumbled ashore, 14 hours after he started, about 100 spectators had gathered to greet him.

"He was so psyched when he hit the beach and there were so many people," said Michelle Evans-Chase, Bruckner's wife and support crew leader. "It's exciting for him to have media there, but it's even more exciting to have so many people."

Chase, 44, did the swim to attract attention to the National Marine Sanctuary at Monterey Bay, sustainable seafood programs, and the Blue Ocean Film Festival, a five-day event that begins today in Monterey.

"I really wanted to do the swim this year without a wetsuit, but I hit my first jellyfish in 30 minutes and it just got worse and worse," said Chase, who started from Main Beach in Santa Cruz at 4:20 a.m. and staggered onto the sand at San Carlos Beach in Monterey at about 6:10 p.m. "It was almost like a mountain climber deciding that going without oxygen isn't going to work that day."

Cindy Cleveland remains the only swimmer ever to conquer Monterey Bay without a wetsuit, a feat she accomplished in 17 hours in 1983. There have been seven failed attempts since, including one by Chase a year ago, when jellyfish stopped him at the nine-mile mark, and one last week by Patti Bauernfeind of Pleasanton, who succumbed to jellyfish stings after 4½ hours, just short of the halfway point of the swim.

"People always ask what I'm most afraid of: Sharks? Jellyfish? I think I'm just like everybody else. One of my biggest fears is how am I going to look? How will people judge what I do? Is it OK to swallow some pride and ego and make sure I make it across?" he said.

"I made the decision to put pride and ego aside today, and I'm glad I did,"

Chase added. "I'd rather be here after 14 hours than climb out after an hour, missing out on everything we encountered as a group all the way across."

Evans-Chase said she made the call to put her husband into the wetsuit about two hours into the swim even though the act violated the English Channel rules. The rules, devised by the English Channel Swimming Association to govern swims across the channel, lend a sense of pride and legitimacy to open water swimmers around the world.

"It was rough, but about an hour into it, the jellies became overwhelming," Evans-Chase said. "It was pretty obvious early on that it was either going to be get in the boat or get into the wetsuit."

After Chase donned the wetsuit, he also applied a heavy coat of A&amp;D balm to lessen stings to his face, neck, hands and feet. The wind picked up about halfway through the swim, pushing most of the jellies deeper into the water and out of Chase's way. He had to swim through another blanket of them, however, during the homestretch to the shore.

"The last mile was just thick, thick, thick jellies. There was no break in between them, just straight jellies," Evans-Chase said. "After a while we said Just do the breaststroke or polo crawls with your head up.' We tried to move them, but there were five more behind each one. We went really slowly, but we were so close. It was a miserable final half mile."

Chase said he drew strength from his cause as an ocean advocate when the pain got bad, and he also made an odd peace with the jellyfish along the way.

"I'm getting stung by them out there, but I'm recognizing that there's nothing bad in the jellies," he said. "They're beautiful creatures, and I was in their environment. Last year I really suffered through it and struggled with that. This year, yeah, it was painful every time I got stung, but I wasn't suffering. That part was gone."

The former Rice University swimmer was accompanied the entire way by a support team. Chase, who now lives in Ocean City, N.J., struggled mightily to maintain his footing as he trudged out of the surf in Monterey, then collapsed to his hands and knees when he hit the sand.

At that point he embraced and kissed Evans-Chase, who swam the final several hundred yards at his side. Several other swimmers and a half-dozen kayaks also escorted him on the final leg of the swim.

Chase said he hopes to make another attempt at swimming Monterey Bay without a wetsuit, but will choose a different time of year -- when the jellyfish are gone -- the next time he tries.

The next thing on his schedule?

"I'm going to see if I can make it across the hot tub at Portola Hotel tonight," he said with a laugh.